Wednesday, 21 April 2010

Liselotte Watkins's Wildes

Penguin UK have just published a set of five books by Oscar Wilde: his sole novel, a collection of his verse, a collection of his stories, a collection of his essays and, instead of a collection of his plays (the obvious fifth volume, I would have thought), a collection of his aphorisms and other sayings*.

The books are designed by Stefanie Posavec, with illustrations of sinister and decadent young 1890s men supplied by fashion artist Liselotte Watkins. They make use of an appropriate colour scheme of purples, yellow-browns and blues, and they look really good. Click for bigger versions.

* This aphorisms collection has had a weird longevity for something originally published as a cash-in for the Stephen Fry-starring movie about Oscar Wilde from 1997: the book has been in print for the whole of the 13 intervening years, in several editions.

The first cover reminds me of Desire from the Sandman series. There's a few panels where he/she is holding a cigarette in this exact pose. I'm not saying the artist would even be familiar with this, but it's still uncanny.